chestnut-treessaid to all the birds that summer too was on the wing. Cock-robinmarked the change, and came no more for crumbs--for he thought it washigh time to build his nest; only there were times when he seatedhimself on the old apple-tree, and sung his little song, just to showthat he hadn't forgotten us, and that he meant to come again when familycares were ended and summer had flown away.
Meanwhile, the flower-stems grew brown and mossy, and in a week or twothe flowers themselves were all in bloom. Had you seen either of thosetwin chestnuts then, you would have seen a thing of beauty which wouldhave dwelt in your mind as a joy for ever. It was summer now. Life andlove were everywhere. The bloom was on the may--pink-eyed may and whitemay. The yellow laburnum peeped out from the thickets of evergreen, theyellow broom dipped its tassels in the river, and elder-flowers perfumedthe wind. I couldn't tell you half the beautiful creatures that visitedthe blossoms on the twin chestnut-trees, and sang about them, andfloated around them, and sipped the honey from every calyx. Greatdroning, velvety bees; white-striped and red busy little hive-bees;large-winged butterflies, gaudy in crimson and black; little whitebutterflies, with scarlet-tipped wings; little blue butterflies, thatglanced in the sunshine like chips of polished steel; and bigslow-floating butterflies, so intensely yellow that they looked for allthe world as if they had been fed on cayenne, like the canaries, youknow. In the gloaming, "Drowsy beetles wheeled their droning flight"around the trees, and noisy cockchafers went whirring up among theblossoms, and imagined they had reached the stars.
When the roses, purple, red, and yellow, clung around the cottage porch,climbed over the thatch, and clung around the chimneys, when the mauvewisterias clustered along the walls, when the honeysuckle scented thegreen lanes, when daisies and tulips had faded in the garden, andcrimson poppies shone through the corn's green, a breeze blew soft andcool from the south-east, and lo! for days and days the twin chestnutssnowed their petals on the lawn and path. And now we listened everynight for the nightingale's song. They came at last, all in one nightit seemed: "Whee, whee, whee." What are those slow and mournful notesringing out from the grove in the stillness of night? A lament forbrighter skies born of memories of glad Italy?
"Churl, churl; chok, wee, cho!" This in a low and beautiful key; thenhigher and more joyful, "Wheedle, wheedle, wheedle; wheety, wheety,wheety; chokee, okee, okee-whee!"
Answering each other all the livelong night, bursting into song atintervals all the day, when, we wondered, did they sleep? Did they takeit in turns to make night and day melodious, keeping watches like thesailors at sea? We thought the song of the mavis so tame now; butcock-robin's had not lost its charm, just as the dear old simple "lilts"of bonnie Scotland, or the sadder ditties of the Green Isle, never pallon our ear, love we ever so well the lays of sunny Italy.
As the summer waned apace, and the leaves on the chestnuts changed to adarker, hardier green, the nightingales ceased their song; but, somehow,we never missed them much, there were so many other songsters. We usedto wonder how many different sorts of birds found shelter in those twinchestnuts, apart from the bickering sparrows, who colonised it; apartfrom the merle and thrush, who merely came home to roost; apart from thestarling, who was continually having quarrels with his wife aboutsomething or other; and apart from the noisy jackdaw, who was such anargumentative fellow, and made himself such a general nuisance that italways ended in his being forcibly ejected.
Robin was invariably the first to awake in the morning. As the firstfaint tinge of dawning day began to broaden in the east, he shook thedew from his wings, and gave vent to a little peevish twitter. Then hewould hop down from the tree, perch on the gate, and begin his sweet weesong: "Twitter, twitter, twee!" We used to wonder if it really was asong of praise to Him who maketh the sun to rise and gladden all theearth.
"Twitter, twitter, twee!" Little birdies are so happy, and awake everymorning as fresh and joyous as innocent children.
"Twitter, twitter, twitter, twee!" went the song for fully half an hour,till it was so light that even the lazy sparrows began to awake, andsquabble, and scold, and fight; for you must know that sparrows holdabout the same social rank in the feathered creation, that the dwellersaround Billingsgate do among human beings.
Then there would be such a chorus of squabbling from the big trees, thatpoor robin had to give up singing in disgust, and come down to have hisbreakfast.
"Hullo!" he would cry, addressing a humble-bee, who with his wings allbedraggled in dew, was slowly moving across the gravel, thinking the sunwould soon rise and dry him--for poor bees often do stay too long onthistles at night, get drugged with the sweet-scented ambrosia, and areunable to get home till morning--"Hullo!" robin would say; "do you knowyou're wanted?"
The poor bee would hold up one arm in mute appeal.
"Keep down your hands," robin would say; "I'll do it ever so gently;"and off the bee's head would go in a twinkling. Then robin would eyehis victim till the sting ceased to work out and in, then quietlyswallow it. This, with an earthworm or two, and a green caterpillar byway of relish, washed down with a bill-full of water from a little poolin a cabbage-leaf, would form robin's breakfast; then away he would flyto the woods, where he could sing all day in peace.
And so the summer sped away in that quiet spot, and anon the fields wereall ablaze with the golden harvest, and the sturdy leaves of ourchestnut-trees turned yellow and brown, and the great nuts came tumblingdown in a steady cannonade each time the wind shook the branches. Andthe twin chestnuts, perhaps, looked more lovely now than ever they hadlooked--they had borrowed the tints of the autumn sunset; yet their verybeauty told us now that the end was not far away.
The wind of a night now moved the branches with a harsher, drierrustling, like the sound of breaking waves or falling water, and weoften used to dream we were away at sea, tossed up and down on thebillows. "Heigho!" we [Part of this page missing.]
There were days when the sun set in an ochrey haze, when the eveningstar with its dimmed eye looked down from a sky of emerald green, whereas the gloaming deepened into night, not a cloud was there to hide theglittering orbs; then the fairies set to work to adorn the trees, andwhen morning came, lo! what a sight was there! All around thehoar-frost lay, white and deep on bush and brake, on the hedgerows andbrambles; and every twiglet and thorn was studded with starry jewels ontit twin chestnuts, and they were trees no more--every branchlet andspray was changed to glittering coral; and garlands of silver andlace-work, lovelier far than human brains could ever plan or fingersweave, were looped from bough to bough, and hung in sheeny radiancearound the sturdy stems.
Those dear old chestnut-trees!
And as the seasons pass o'er the chestnut-trees, and each one clothesthem in a beauty of its own, so across the seasons of our life Timespreads his varied joys: childhood, in its innocence, hath its joys,youth in its hope of brighter days, manhood in its strength andambition, and old age in the peaceful trust of a better world to come.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.
THE STORY OF AILEEN'S HUSBAND, NERO.
"The pine-trees, gathering closer in the shadows, Listened in every spray--"
I certainly had no intention of bringing tears to little Ida's eyes; itwas mere thoughtlessness on my part, but the result was precisely thesame; and there was Ida kneeling beside that great Newfoundland,Theodore Nero, with her arms round his neck, and a moment or two after Ihad spoken, I positively saw a tear fall on his brow, and lie there likea diamond. Ah! such tears are far more precious than any diamonds.
"You don't love that dog, mouse?" These were the words I had givenutterance to, half-banteringly, as she sat near me on the grass playingwith the dog. I went on with my writing, and when I looked up againbeheld that tear.
Yes, I felt sorry, and set about at once planning some means of amends.I knew human nature and Ida's nature too well to make any fuss about thematter--I would not even let her know I had seen her wet eyelashes, nordid I attempt to soothe her. If I had done so, there w
ould have beensome hysterical sobbing and a whole flood of tears, with red eyes andperhaps a headache to follow. So without looking up I said--
"By the way, birdie, did ever I tell you Nero's story?"
"Oh, no," she said, in joyful forgetfulness of her recent grief; "and Iwould so like to hear it. But," she added, doubtfully, "a few minutesago you said you could not talk to me, that you must finish writing yourchapter. Why have you changed your mind?"
"I don't see why in this world, Ida," I replied, smiling, "a man shouldnot be allowed to change his mind sometimes as well as a woman."
This settled the matter, and I put away my paper in my portfolio, andprepared to talk.
Where were we seated? Why, under the old pine-tree--our _very_favourite seat. My wife was
Aileen Aroon, A Memoir Page 43